In the present day internal combustion engines, the engine carries out a compression function. I have calculated that this compression function is accomplished at a substantial cost in on-board fuel. It is done inefficiently, adiabatically, in a single stage, and in a hot cylinder. A diesel engine, for example, uses fuel to compress about the same amount of air each stroke at cruise speed as it does while idling in a traffic jam. In land vehicles alone, and in the U.S. alone, I have estimated that approximately 6.7 million barrels of oil are burned per day to accomplish this inefficient and wasteful task.
The significance of the present invention is that by building new engines according to the invention described herein and by making minimal changes in present gasoline and diesel stock car engines, a substantial portion of this amount of oil can be saved, such as about 60% in the case of the diesel engine. That is, such portion need not be burned, and therefore it need not be imported. My copending patent application Ser. No. 29,884, filed Apr. 13, 1979, entitled INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE SYSTEM, describes an invention by which all of this oil can be saved.
There is prior art on using stored compressed air for starting an internal combustion engine (see for example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,849,324). Stored compressed air is also known for use in overload situations in which it is to be fed into a combustion chamber after combustion to add some extra force. Candelise, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,017,872 shows a compressor driven by the engine for supplying a tank from which compressed air is fed into a combustion chamber during the latter portion of the expansion stroke to help burn previously unburned hydrocarbons. Further, reference can be had to the prior art of record in the six patent applications of applicant incorporated by reference herein and listed in the "Summary" section below. Prior Art on using oxygen enriched gas has problems with resultant high temperatures.
It is an advantage of the present invention to reduce the need for the U.S. to import oil.
It is an object of this invention to reduce the fuel consumption of internal combustion engines and to do so with minimum changes in present engines.
It is an object of this invention to improve the mileage (miles per gallon of fuel) of vehicles using internal combustion engines.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an internal combustion engine system in which some of the fuel-expensive, inefficient, compression function is eliminated, and in which compressed oxygen containing gas such as air, oxygen enriched air, or oxygen, efficiently generated preferably from non-oil fuel, is fed from a compressed air tank on the vehicle into the combustion chambers.
It is another object of this invention to provide an engine system capable of improved mileage with only minimal changes to present engines.
It is another advantage of this invention that it provides an engine system that can use oxygen enriched air without problems of high temperatures because of the cooling, high expansion ratio, only partial compression, and high r.p.m.